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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25677127">deplorable victory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotchpotch/pseuds/hotchpotch'>hotchpotch</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aslan's Country, Charn, Fae &amp; Fairies, Gen, Just a lil somethin somethin, OC IS SMALL AND YOUNG AND ALSO POC, could be heaven could be narnia who knows not me, i tried to make that explicit but it ended up too clunky, maybe next time, potentially i mean i left it open ended, saw a gifset on tumblr to do with jadis and her sister and wrote this, so i just over emphasised how white jadis and her sister is, the four loves of my life aren't in this one sorry :(</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:20:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,704</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25677127</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotchpotch/pseuds/hotchpotch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When this princess, the one who still wears her dynasty’s savage legacy in the colour of her hair — the one who chose to study politicking as much as malediction — when she reaches to tip up Sheba’s little chin with a single cold white finger, Sheba realises that for all her life spent raised as a nobleman’s daughter, she does not even know her name.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>All Things Charn</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>deplorable victory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>black lives matter</p>
<p>https://robinwritesshitposts.tumblr.com/post/623798817789280256/blm-masterpost-here-is-a-post-with-a-website-about</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sheba is a very young girl when she first meets the second princess of Charn.</p>
<p>A towering woman of exceptional beauty is she, with thin lips the colour of blood and long brittle hair to match (but for the thick streak of silver growing from her right temple, a sure sign of a strong dark witch). Unlike the elder princess, this is a woman with some humour to her coldness. She can better fool you into believing her kindness, at any rate; the elder is too deluded by her own power to consider learning convincing mummery.</p>
<p>When this princess, the one who still wears her dynasty’s savage legacy in the colour of her hair — the one who chose to study politicking as much as malediction — when she reaches to tip up Sheba’s little chin with a single cold white finger, Sheba realises that for all her life spent raised as a nobleman’s daughter, she does not even know her name.</p>
<p>‘Fairies are wily pests, aren’t they, dear?’ the princess remarks drily. Her fingernail is like a painted claw, tapping away lightly at Sheba’s skin. ‘You don’t even know what you are.’</p>
<p>Actually, she does. She never remembers learning, but simply the fact of her size was reminder enough that no Giant had ever graced her bloodline. Simply put, fairies are not a people who follow rules. Even those of their own making: Sheba is quite sure there are expectations against trading babies in worlds like this. She shouldn’t even really be here. Her sires had probably made a mistake, will probably realise it soon and come for her, but for now she must content herself with this… place. Chaos rules freely enough without the need of outside influence. (Any words such as “decency” or “goodness” had long been purged from Charn… and even fairies have standards.)</p>
<p>‘Tell me, little night-beast,’ begins the princess again, ‘does that fool of a High Councillor even notice how feeble and sickly you are? Such fragile bones… like a bird, wouldn’t you say? So easy to splinter. I would not even have to use magic to snap you clean.’</p>
<p>Sheba is a very wise young girl and holds her tongue. Still, she imagines what it would be like to drip poison into the princess’s goblet the way she does for the king… Her skin is so white! So white there looks to be nothing beneath it but a skeleton. Death, the princess would suit. But what point would there be in killing the king if it did not lead to his daughters sowing war across their worldwide empire? What could be more chaotic? Perhaps if Sheba destroyed this world she’d be taken to another, one her sires had stolen the High Councillor’s true daughter to.</p>
<p>‘My father’s days of glory are long behind him. No longer do executions send a thrill throughout the palace, no longer does his wrath have servants cowering from sight. For this alone I will allow you your quaint little killing; let it not be said my rule is unjust. The people will love their queen.’</p>
<p>Sheba does not doubt it; no other monarch in history is so despised as the lazy emperor who governs them now, and no other monarch in history had been so adored as the King-Who-Killed, he who slaughtered seven hundred nobles for mere thoughts of rebellion.</p>
<p>Both of the princesses are more the latter’s stock than the former’s.</p>
<p>‘His death will come soon. And my sister’s will swiftly follow. Worry not,’ she adds in an amused drawl when Sheba’s heart picks up (the elder princess has a whole head full of cursed silver, and she’s much too young a fairy to turn her hand on such a challenge). ‘I’ll not have you steal that right from me. Not even your charming little puck face could endear me to forgive that.’ She pinches Sheba’s cheek, a touch too hard. ‘Tell me your name, devil.’</p>
<p>‘Bathsheba,’ says Sheba simply. She knows that her sires would have given her her true name before swapping her with the High Councillor’s daughter, but this is the one people call her now. And even if she did know her true name she certainly wouldn’t tell it to the princess, who wisely keeps her own name sealed from memory. Unlike the elder Jadis, who is too vainglorious to believe that the power of her name can ever be used against her.</p>
<p>The princess repeats it through a curled lip. ‘Fitting.’ She steps closer; Sheba has to tilt her head all the way back against her nape to look her in the eye. ‘Once you’ve stopped playing with your food and kill him, you’ll scurry all the way up to my royal quarters and declare it. As a reward, perhaps you will be able to content yourself as the queen’s meddling little pet. Until then… well.’ The princess smiles, terrible and beautiful. ‘Do take care of yourself. My sister is no lily.’</p>
<p>She takes care of herself. She stops playing with her food. The king is dead by the week.</p>
<p>And Sheba? Sheba’s heart is frozen into stone by the princess without a name, eyes unseeing and ears unhearing, not to be woken until the civil war is long over and Jadis and her allies are crushed. (The princess takes care of her pets.)</p>
<p>(The princess is dead.)</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Sheba wakes to the chiming of a bell.</p>
<p>The palace is falling.</p>
<p>It is crumbling, and the sweet chime is only getting louder and louder. Sheba flies from the princess’s bedchambers (dead but untouched by dust or cobwebs) and all the way down the hall. Every door of the castle leading out into Charn is fused closed, but the windows remain gaping holes and Sheba is not afraid of a little bruising or a broken bone — she leaps through one and lands ungainly on her shoulders upon dry dirt.</p>
<p>The red sun is dying. Everything is bathed in blood-light, but there is no true blood, no bodies, no hint of any armies or battle or life and death of any kind. Sheba shivers.</p>
<p>She hasn’t brought chaos to Charn. She’s brought the very opposite of chaos. She’s brought nothingness.</p>
<p>There’s a whisper in the air, something that makes her turn around. Just as she does, there’s a flash of light from a far off balcony — the princess, Jadis’s, balcony — and Sheba knows deep in her heart that she is finally alone. This world is empty, now. And it was all her fault. She killed the king.</p>
<p>She walks. She doesn’t know where she’s going yet, but she’s pretty sure there used to be a forest where she’s stepping right now. There’s not even any birds. There’s not even any flowers.</p>
<p>She walks. Even the ocean is still. It’s barren. There’s no way for her to know, but she does: it’s barren. No fish, no merfolk, no seagrass. Just nothing.</p>
<p>She walks. There’s something walking alongside her, a creature she has never seen before or even heard of in stories and songs. It’s a great beast, but still smaller than her, with rolling shoulders and wide padding hands and an enormous circlet of yellow hair eclipsing its head. She shivers again.</p>
<p>‘What are you?’ she asks it. ‘How are you alive? Everything else is dead.’</p>
<p>‘I am a lion,’ says Lion. ‘How are you alive? Everything else is dead.’</p>
<p>Sheba is quiet. Lion doesn’t seem very perturbed by any of this at all. ‘Are you a part of Jadis’s army? A… a secret weapon? I saw that flash on the balcony… I think it was her.’</p>
<p>Lion rumbles. ‘I showed you that flash on the balcony. It was.’</p>
<p>‘The wind showed me.’</p>
<p>Lion only repeats, ‘I.’</p>
<p>She thinks back to her lessons, wondering what controls the wind, but then feels silly. There was no Lion in her lessons.</p>
<p>She walks. Lion follows beside her, half a step behind.</p>
<p>They pass what looks to be the remains of the High Councillor’s old summer house. They used to live there whenever the king had one of his moods and sent away all his advisors for a few months, which was very rarely a summertime occurrence so the name seems rather arbitrary. She hasn’t seen it since she was even littler than she is now. She wonders what had happened to the family… her family. The High Councillor had had a husband and a son, a true son who grew as gruff and big as them and trained in the royal militia. The son was grumpy and shoved her around a bit, but he hadn’t called her harsher words than pest.</p>
<p>She thinks he was her brother.</p>
<p>‘I’ve killed everything,’ says Sheba. She has. Every single thing in the whole world. She’s not sure if she dislikes it. Charn was a cursed place when it was alive. It was very difficult to make things worse in a place like that.</p>
<p>But now she’s alone. She knows she dislikes being alone.</p>
<p>‘You killed a king,’ corrects Lion, ‘and now everything is killed. That is not the same.’</p>
<p>‘Where did you come from?’ If Lion was from Charn, it would have eaten her by now. Or tried to. ‘What other worlds are there? Will you take me to yours?’ Does it still breathe?</p>
<p>Lion rumbles again and this time it scares her. Maybe it will eat her after all. ‘Will you kill the kings in my world? Will you feed bitterness between the princesses? Will you foster chaos?’</p>
<p>That bitterness had already been there. But Sheba is just as wise as she had been with the nameless princess and holds her tongue once more. ‘No.’ She’ll do anything to leave this place. Lion’s world doesn’t even have to be the one her sires are from. ‘I’ll serve the kings in your world. I’ll foster love between the princesses. I’ll kill chaos.’ Her belly churns at her promises. None of them sound very fun.</p>
<p>… Lion laughs. ‘More fun than here.’</p>
<p>That’s true.</p>
<p>‘Very well. Grasp my mane, keep your oath, and you will enter my world.’</p>
<p>She grasps its halo of gold. She whispers a vow to try.</p>
<p>There’s a second flash.</p>
<p>And Charn is truly dead.</p>
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